Thursday, February 24, 2005

The Metrics of Web Content

Search engine optimization and keyword-rich content are already popular internet business phrases. Businesses that rely on website traffic are reexamining how their existing content, often added by non-writers, is impairing their web presence in an environment increasingly driven towards search engine page rankings. In light of this, why is web content nearly always an afterthought?

Consider this: Google's very popular search engine crawls website pages feeding on one thing-- text. The Googlebot doesn't care about the design, ignores graphics, and no longer includes meta tags and alt tags in its indexes. Words. Text. CONTENT.
(I don't mean to diminish the work of designers and developers, here. Color palettes, graphics, use of space, site architecture and applications are proven elements in a user experience, but they are usually already a done deal when the content is the site's real impairment.)

Save for a few universal symbols, people exchange information in the form of language. I buy magazines. I read newspapers. I read books and troll websites and blogs. And most people do at least one of these things. I crave language and language provides information.

Between customers and visitors searching for websites that match their search criteria and businesses and web sites vying for web presence and page rankings, the system of exchange has become based on a commodity of words. Keywords and web content are as negotiable as gold nuggets, then, right? But in the framework of an economical system that values the metrics of more hardware-based industries, it's not surprising that business' demands are not equalling the compensation for those who provide web content.

Why is it that one of the oldest and most accepted systems of communication is so often an afterthought? Because in the past writers as a whole have typically practiced what is thought to be a soft art, a fine art. But when the product a web writer provides is expected to shore-up a business' web presence and draw measurable financial revenues and exponentially increase customer numbers, then it's time to get a metrics system with which to measure the value of such a service. Likewise, when a writer's product becomes inextricably linked with the hardware and software underpinnings of a giant search engine such as Google's or Yahoo!'s, then can a web content writer really relate to the practice as a "fine art?" There is nothing fine about it. It requires hardcore attentiveness to current culture and trends in various areas, an understanding of the basic concepts of how words integrate into space and design, awareness of cognitive word associations, and respect for the influence that language can have on culture.

Optimization.
The word itself implies specialization, customization.


  • When you pay a mechanic to optimize an automobile's performance.....$$$$
  • When you contract a software programmer to optimize a program.....$$$$$$
  • When you hire a cabinet maker to customize a kitchen.....$$$$$+

These people can bring home the big cashola because their industries, their services, have their own accepted standards and measures of value. Does the car go faster? Does the program involve less bandwidth, crunch numbers faster? How much value has the custom kitchen added to the value of the house?

Web content writers have the ability to focus the scope of webpages, emphasize a product name or brand and build a keyword vocabulary that blends smoothly into a text that synthesizes with the design and architecture of a website as a whole, providing a pleasurable user experience.

What content writers need now is a toolbox of measuring sticks. Has the website counted more visitors? Have revenues increased since new or fresh content was added? Is there a more positive user experience? Are there proven search engine results? These are the negotiating beads content writers and technical writers might come to rely on as their accepted industry wampum.

"The Rise of the Creative Class," by Richard Florida is well worth the read, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html

posted by jrotman @ 10:10 AM